


That Cold Dead Place

by kageillusionz



Series: The Stockpile [4]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Blood (not Bloodplay), Canonical Violence/Gore, Female POV, Gen, M/M, Mutant Concentration Camps, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 19:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageillusionz/pseuds/kageillusionz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Brotherhood are liberating the mutant concentration camps that have popped up by human run organisations.  There Mystique finds someone abandoned in one of the torture cells who she thought she would never find in a place like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Cold Dead Place

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags. I'd hate to find that I didn't provide sufficient enough warning and triggered you because that isn't my intention at all!
> 
> Please be warned also if you're going to click the photoset of James in the Last King of Scotland (you'll know what I'm talking about if you've seen the movie) that this piece is inspired by [here](http://amarriageoftrueminds.tumblr.com/post/39655657842/amarriageoftrueminds-is-it-wrong-of-me-that). Not quite 100% by amarriageoftrueminds' prompt, but close to it. Original drabble found [here](http://bittersweet-silence.tumblr.com/post/39661533774/drabble-that-cold-dead-place). Thank you so much to [**afrocurl**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl) for betaing!  
>  [EDIT] amarriageoftrueminds made a cover for this [look](http://amarriageoftrueminds.tumblr.com/post/45768142546/fic-rec-time-okay-so-donkeys-years-ago-i-saw)!

It is Mystique who finds him first, chained to the ceiling in a sound-proofed cell as his limbs hang limply at his sides. 

( There is blood dripping onto the floor causing ripples to race across the surface of the pool that forms below Charles Xavier's still form, dying the once pristine white tiles in shades of crimson. )

Xavier’s body dangles in the middle of the room, meat hooks gouged deep into the flesh of his chest. Mystique has never seen something so cruel done to anything but dead animals; she would never wish this fate upon anyone not deserving let alone soft-hearted Xavier.

The bile churns, clawing its way up her throat desperate for escape. She vaguely registers the sound of someone retching outside in the hallway. There is a small part of her that wants to join them, leaving the room the way she had come and pretending she did not see anything. Ignorance is bliss and can only be afforded by fools and children.

Mystique is neither of those nor the sister to anyone. The latter is an identity and a right she has long shed with the memories of her past life. Now, she is Magneto’s lieutenant and the years have hardened her. 

She could and will do this.  What this is still remained to be seen.

( The blood is red and thick and starting to congeal. It is all over his cheek, his neck, his chest, his stomach. )

She looks critically at the ruined state of Xavier’s shirt; the lavender one from ages back that had always been in a rumpled condition.  It had definitely seen better days; the fabric currently stained dark and sticking to Xavier’s body like a second skin that makes his ribs stick out prominently.

“Get him down carefully,” Mystique growls out, flicking her fingers towards Xavier. Two of the new Brotherhood recruits under her command scramble forward and begin the slow process of lowering him. The gears squeak in protest, grating upon her nerves but she never says anything as he is lowered inch by inch by agonizing inch.

She does not foolishly hope that Xavier has survived this. Death would be more merciful in a place like this. 

( Drip, drip, dripping. )

 Xavier crumples feet first into the pool of his own blood, his chest barely moving.

The sight chills her down to the bone to see Xavier so still and yet she remains rooted to the spot.

Xavier looks so vulnerable as if breathing on him will break him into a million irreparable pieces. _He probably did_ , a traitorous part of her mind hisses, _when you left with Magneto_.

How long had he been here? How long had they been doing this to him? How long had it been since she got the news? How long...?

( Ripples race outwards to lap lazily at the edge of the pool, the room reflected in the sheen of the liquid.)

The rope slowly goes slack as the tension is bled dry from its fibres.  The meat hooks continue to stand proudly.

Mystique does not move him. 

( The smell; oh God, the metallic smell. )

“Find Magneto.” Her voice is calm, strengthened by her resolve to not crumble and break in front of her underlings. They snap to attention.

Raven will not be able to help Xavier much, but Mystique has learned and experienced much since she last answered to that name. 

"Tell him I found Charles Xavier.” 

( No matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll always step back when the pool of their blood edges too close.)

Magneto sweeps into the room minutes later with little fanfare, pace seemingly unhurried but the length of his stride betrays him. His face is a tightly controlled thundercloud beneath the helmet he wears.

There is a small twitch of his upper lip. Ah, the news has affected him worse than Mystique expected. 

( Red Blood Cells. White Blood Cells. Platelets. Plasma. Haemoglobin. All present and accounted for in that viscous mass.  And only under the scrutiny of a particularly strong microscope would anyone be able to tell the difference between mutant and human. )

“Leave us.” Magneto’s voice crackles with thinly veiled rage, his hands turn to fists at his sides. The recruits do not need telling twice as the metal in the room begins to tremble. 

Mystique does not budge from where she stands, not even when a storm is brewing. Magneto needs her there. She is his anchor in this whirlwind of chaos, stepping into Xavier’s shoes after they left him on the beach that day. 

His cape drags through the blood, staining the hem black, but neither of them notice.

She watches keenly as Magneto bends down and lifts Xavier up. It doesn't take much effort at all, testament to how well Xavier has been treated here. 

Magneto has Xavier’s blood literally on his hands now, slick against the soft black leather of his gloves. He is as calm as can be expected, laying out Xavier on a gurney with a gentleness that surprises them both. 

She notes the comparison between now and then.  Of a time when Magneto had shut himself in his room for a week, a storm of guilt and anger only observed by four walls. They should have never had left Xavier, not since they turned him into a cripple and did nothing to help. 

It is nothing compared to the man that had shut himself in his room for a week after Mystique had brought back news of Xavier turning into a cripple. )

His hands move down to Xavier’s chest and they hesitate above the hooks.  Magneto doesn’t remove them and she lets out a quiet breath she hadn’t known she was holding in.

The metal in the room swirls around Magneto, their arcs growing quicker in velocity. She says nothing when Magneto's slightly trembling hands cup Xavier’s face between them, smudging the dried flakes there.

“I didn’t want this for you, Charles," Magneto says in a hushed whisper. It is almost like she doesn’t exist.

"See what happens when you give the humans an inch? They take every opportunity.  You know I was right all along.” 

He methodically begins to cut the shirt away from Xavier’s body and they both stare at the track marks that dot the inside of Xavier’s arm.  She struggles to remain clinically detached, to control the growing ire at the humans who did this to the one mutant that believed unequivocally and wholeheartedly in the good of all others.

 “We were meant to stand side by side, you and I. We could have achieved a great many things. And now the world will pay for what they have done to you.  I will bring fire and brimstone to the doorstep of every man.”

Mystique has never been one to believe in miracles but then Xavier gives an almost inaudible wheeze.

All the metal items in the room freeze in mid-air and then drop against the white tiles with a loud clamour. 

Her curses are drowned out amongst Magneto’s own when Xavier’s eyes roll into the back of his head and Xavier begins to thrash in Magneto’s arms, words spilling past white lips.

“Please, not the children. They don’t know anything. Take me instead. I am the one you want. I’m an omega levelled telepath.” _I am so sorry._

She is buffeted by Xavier’s memories, recalling them like she had been the one in the hallway of Westchester as they came. All the emotions that Xavier broadcasts makes her scales click.

_‘Cold.  So very cold.  Sorry Raven… Erik…’_

Magneto cradles Xavier against his chest. "Charles, I am right here. Look at me, see only me.” 

Mystique feels her heart pounding against her breast in the wake of the memories as she watches Magneto whisper empty words of platitude.

They could have created anything between them had they thought to look for the middle-ground.

She had once deluded herself into thinking Magneto was the one thing missing in her life and mistakenly lain in his bed. How very wrong she had been. She used him just as much as he used her, a simple transaction free of any affection and emotion.

"Charles, _please_." 

Xavier coughs feebly, his body now wracked by shivers.  Mystique wonders if he is living on borrowed time.

“Cold.”

Magneto’s bravado is breaking fast, like chinks of armour falling away to reveal the all too vulnerably human flesh inside. Xavier has always been Magneto’s weakness, no matter how much he tried to hide it. The clasps of Magneto’s cape are undone and the fabric is soon tucked around Xavier like a blanket.

“You are coming with the Brotherhood.  Not a decision you would make willingly, but you need us.”

Xavier wheezes out a soft puff of air in a parody of a laugh that clearly hurts.  His tongue slowly sweeps over his cracked lips before he speaks. “My students?”  Of course, even on the brink of death, Xavier would still be thinking of his students.

“Are fine,” Magneto finishes for him like bookends of the same soul. Mystique wonders if she is jealous by what they have. “You have trained them well. And you ought to be more concerned about yourself, Charles. I will return you home when I am convinced you are well enough.”

Xavier turns his head to glance at her over Magneto’s shoulder and Mystique finds a lance of adrenaline shoot through her system. Her blood runs cold, completely ensnared by electric blue eyes that look straight through her.

And one piercing look is all it takes for Xavier, the world’s most powerful telepath, to know everything. But she does not feel the tell-tale intrusive signature of a telepath running their fingers through her mind, unless Xavier has improved much in the many years since their adolescence to be able to slip in and out like a shadow weaving between her thoughts.

His gaze gravitates back to Magneto, the action unsettling her still. “Why would you return me there to that cold dead place when you have always been my home?” Xavier says at length.  He coughs and shudders, closing his eyes.

“I don’t want to go back.  There is no one who plays chess or challenges me like you once did, Erik.” Xavier’s wistful voice cuts off. Mystique had been surprised to find Xavier the eldest at his school, barring Wolverine; the teachers there were all once Xavier’s students.

Magneto mumbles something, soft enough that she can’t hear it and then ducks his head to press his face as close to Xavier's collarbone as possible. 

 _Idiots, the pair of them_ , she thinks and glibly says, "He needs a doctor, Magneto; the sooner the better."

It is possibly the only time that Magneto ever listens as he lifts Xavier into his arms with as much care as a mother would with her babe.  Xavier passes out with a content little smile on his face.  It is for the best.

Magneto does not falter when he stalks out and no one dares to comment about the man in Magneto’s arms.  She had taught them well.

Later, the Brotherhood stood as a collective at the top of the nearest hill, and Mystique watches with a cold sense of satisfaction as Pyro torches the place to the ground.


End file.
